Typing with 2500 keys is hard, which is why autocomplete has been around in China since the 1950s. But now it’s everywhere – and it’s messing with your brain
Brian Brainerd/The Denver Post via Getty Images
IT’S 1950 in Communist China, and you want to type a letter. You lean over a metal tray about the size of a sheet cake. Instead of keys, the tray is filled with tiny pieces of metal type. You manoeuvre a knob on a lever across the tray until it hovers over the piece you want. Press the lever, and with a thwunk the piece leaps up from the tray, strikes an ink pad, then pounds the paper mounted above the appliance. Now begins your hunt for the next piece. You have about 2500 to choose from.
This was the…
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